Brands should know by now not to trust consumers. So, let’s stop pretending consumers trust brands… or that trust is even an important brand KPI.
I don’t need to look much further than my own consumer behavior to realize we’re a disloyal breed when it comes to our relationships with brands. I’ll easily take the next best thing to my “go-to” if I find myself in a situation where my usual choice is unavailable or suddenly unable to meet my needs. Any coffee at 6am is better than no coffee— ya feel me. I first learned to pay attention to my situational infidelity towards brands about 15 years ago, after reading Byron Sharp’s breakthrough book How Brands Grow. Now, I’ve come to accept it’s rampant throughout many (if not all) of my supposedly most committed brand relationships, no matter the category. Just the other day, my husband and I hopped over to HBO after months on a Netflix binge to watch a series everyone is talking about. Now we’re down a rabbit hole of catching up on all things HBO. So long (for now), Netflix.
The harsh truth: most of us will opt for a ready substitute if obtaining our preferred brand becomes too difficult, costly, time-consuming, or conflicts with another higher-order need. So, “If we’re not loyal to brands, how can we expect brands to be loyal to us?” We can’t. Brands are as shamelessly committed to meeting their needs (profit and growth) as we are. And, if you believe loyalty and trust go hand-in-hand as I do, then likely you’re already sensing some hopelessness with respect to the pursuit of brand trust. But let’s unpack this even further.
Trust is a big, hairy, complex emotion… and, at its core, it’s an interpersonally derived emotion. Although we might say things like “I trust Brand XYZ,” rarely (if ever) are we thinking about that brand as a faceless, conscious-less thing. We’re thinking about the people within it— sometimes specific people (CEOs, producers, inventors)— for whom we have real or perceived data points to assess factors of trust like competence, integrity and intention.
As humans, we instinctively know how to gauge our trust of other humans; however, the same cannot be said of our trust of things. Those who have dug deep into the neuroscience of trust have found that our bodies naturally produce more or less oxytocin (the “trust hormone”) under certain interpersonally derived conditions such as being publicly recognized by another human being, feeling reciprocal trust, or giving and receiving vulnerability. Absent from these scientists’ list of conditions that elicit more or less trust are person-to-thing interactions. This doesn’t mean things, like brands, can’t make us feel good or even feel trust as a proxy for a perceived interpersonal interaction, but it’s fragile trust at best.
Despite these practical and scientific contradictions to the existence of brand trust, brand health researchers still love to tout their special sauce for measuring it which, in turn, has brands building million-dollar campaigns to grow trust— but to what end? Interestingly, none of the brands on Morning Consult’s 2024 list of The Most Trusted Brands in the U.S. appear on their list of the year’s Fastest Growing Brands. Hmmm. Only Dove, Google, M&M’s, Band-Aid, and Cheerios cross-over when the data is dissected by age. It’s worth mentioning these five brands are also among the top advertising spenders in their categories, have the greatest category market share, and have stayed true to their iconic brand assets and benefits throughout their double-(sometimes triple)-digit histories. So perhaps these factors are the real drivers of their growth, not trust.
Precisely. Creators of brand trust surveys are some of the first to admit that brand trust is a fuzzy indicator, driven by a variety of underlying factors such as ubiquity, number and frequency of touchpoints over time, and consistency. Now we’re getting somewhere! As a brand owner and builder, I’ve found these factors far more easy to measure and more precise indicators of growth vs. trust. So, ditch the trust survey and— instead— build a growth game plan around the following:
Familiarity
Familiarity is awareness x consistency. It’s when people know of your brand and can also name a consistent set of motivating attributes or benefits about your brand. Dove is a great example. Here in the U.S., Dove has stood for moisture, soft skin, and authenticity for decades. Ask anyone, and they’ll likely replay one of these ideas. As for Dove’s longtime competitor, NIVEA— which is estimated to be around the same size globally, but not as fast-growing in the U.S.— I’ve got nothing. It’s… um… lotion. Unfortunately, knowing a brand’s category affiliation is just awareness, not familiarity, and awareness alone is only part of the growth equation.
Access
To put it in Sharp-speak, brand access is about being mentally and physically available every time and everywhere a moment of need could arise. Google is a master of access. It has positioned itself as the one-size-fits-all password entry point to millions of online occasions, whether directly tied to one of Google’s owned platforms or not. One can hardly touch a web-enabled device without being reminded of or interacting with Google. So much so, “Google” is the ubiquitous term for online info gathering regardless of search engine or site.
QC (Quality Control)
QC goes beyond earning a stamp of approval at the end of a production line. It’s about setting expectations and then diligently living up to those expectations at all touchpoints and iterations of your brand. M&M’s launched with the promise of being chocolate coated in a colorful candy shell. Since that day, they’ve never veered from that promise, ensuring their colors are always vibrant, never muted (despite decades of dye controversy). Every version of M&M’s— peanut, pretzel, holiday, even bars— involves colorful candy coatings. For the brand, this feature is a closely protected calling card and experiential must-have. And, by staying true to it, they’ve unlocked countless ways to grow.
Key Takeaways:
Brand trust is a myth.
As a measure, it’s fuzzy and has little to no correlation with growth.
Instead, Familiarity, Access and QC are drivers of a feeling like brand trust that do correlate with growth and offer more precise diagnostics and actions.